Wout Faes has left City on loan for Monaco, getting the move he asked for in the summer, with manager Cifuentes predicting there will be others who follow him out the door
Marti Cifuentes saw Wout Faes depart Leicester City this week(Image: Plumb Images/Leicester City FC via Getty Images)
More exits are expected at Leicester City this month as Marti Cifuentes pushes for a group of players who find it easy to “perform at 110 per cent”.
Wout Faes moved on loan to Monaco this week, the Belgian belatedly getting the City departure he wanted in the summer.
Cifuentes has been more forthright of late in calling for the club to move on those in a similar boat, knowing that players who don’t want to be at City find it more difficult to reach their best level.
Harry Winks is the leading contender to depart next with the midfielder left out of the matchday squad since the start of December.
Asked if a couple more players could follow Faes through the exit door, Cifuentes said at his press conference on Thursday: “Yeah, I think it’s the nature of football. I think it’s a possibility for players that wanted to leave in the summer. The market is open for everyone. We’ll see what’s going to happen.
“In the summer there were a number of players who expressed a desire to leave, which is normal in football, especially in a team that has been relegated from the Premier League.
“It has never been an issue as long as everybody behaved in a professional way and everybody understood that we’d try to find solutions from both sides.
“If (there’s no solution), we need to make sure that we carry the responsibility and the respect that the fans deserve.
“We are working to have the most committed squad we can in the sense that when someone is looking for something else, it’s never easy to perform at 110 per cent.
“That’s what we’ve been trying to deal with and that’s the process we’ve been in over the past months.”
The more players who leave, the more gaps in the squad and the more wiggle room on the wage bill to bring in players who do want to represent City. But midway through the window, there have been no arrivals yet.
Cifuentes added: “I’ve been quite clear in terms of the direction that we want to go in terms of rebuilding, introducing young players slowly from the academy, which I believe in a lot.
“And then in terms of finding the right profiles in terms of players who are very hungry to help Leicester get back where we want to get back and to build the kind of identity as a club that I think can sustain us over time to achieve our targets.”
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